For my final project, I was thinking of using the dataset Dickinson College Archives, Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. With this dataset I was thinking of arguing, or exploring, if children with both parents still living were more likely to run away from the school or get expelled than children with only one, or no parents still living. An argument behind that is these children could have more value in their family relationships and tribal life that they would want to get back to and not be at the school. While those with less of a family oriented childhood may be more inclined to finish out the years at the school.
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4 replies on “Module 6: Final project proposal”
That’s a good thought for a project, but it’s going to be very hard to see. Most 19th century data only lists a father (for white or Native children regardless), so you’re not often going to be able to see if both parents were living. It might be easier to see if there’s a relation between age and how long children stayed (ie, did younger children stay at the school longer) or a geographic component (children whose homes were further away stayed longer because it was harder for them to leave). Or even if there’s a time-of-year component: did children leave more often in summer than winter?
Thank you for your feedback! I like the idea of seeing if there’s a geographical component. I was originally thinking of seeing if certain tribes stay longer than others but then was worried if there would be too many moving parts to that, so I like using the distance instead of specific tribes!
I’ll have to take another look at that dataset, but I think that should be doable–you may want to add another column categorizing tribal nations by region (ie, Navajo and Pueblo as Southwest, Haudenosaunee/Iroquois and Mahican as Northeast, etc) to make your life easier down the road. You’ll want to spend a good chunk of time cleaning tribal names because as I recall, there’s a lot of alternate spellings (St Regis Mohawk/Mohawk/Iroquois, for example).
Okay! Thank you for your help! That’s definitely something that would’ve taken me time to think of haha.